Hives. Hives. Music. Aids. Aids.
My friend Sheena made an art
project called the HIV/AIDS Mix. It was a collaborative work where she
asked participants to take a moment to think about a song that, for
them, related to the pandemic. This could be extremely personal or
topical, anything they wanted. After she collected 10 or so titles, she
created a mix CD in the order of each song’s receipt. The power of this
gesture was that, as a collectively produced mix CD, the affective links
that each participant made with their own contribution was multiplied
throughout the compilation. The chance order of the tracks allowed for
meaning to build upon meaning, and made for compelling insight into
people’s different relationships with popular music and HIV. But it was
upon the first listen that the work really made its impact on me as
participant and listener.
I was the first to contribute and received a disc within a few weeks.
I was so excited to get it and rushed home to my grim little apartment
on the edge of a highway onramp. I don’t know whether it was the
excitement of receiving the mix CD or the exhaustion of having partied
too much the 3 nights before, but I felt feverish as the first track
played. As I heard Elliott Smith perform “Can’t Make A Sound,” a
familiar wave of emotion struck me, having listened to the track on
repeat the day of my HIV-diagnosis several years before. The final
brassy horns faded away and a slow yet deep rumble of percussion ushered
in the next track: Diamanda Galas’ “Let Us Praise the Masters of Slow
Death.”
Percussion and ululation. My heartbeat accelerated and I became
delirious. The orange light flickering through my window gave me the
impression that my bedroom was on fire. I sweated and cried. I hid
beneath the covers for fear of some terrible retribution. Where Smith’s
voice had cushioned, soothed, and supported me, Diamanda’s voice
threatened, mourned, and pierced my heart with its unrelenting
intensity. For what seemed like an interminable and unflinching period
of time, I curled up in my bed, a thrall to her voice. Is this what it
was like to live while your whole world crumbled and those you loved
succumbed to those masters of slow death? Was this the legacy I was born
from, initiated into through the mixing of blood and cum? These
questions were my fear, the gift of an irrational wisdom and raging
calm.
What followed was silence and breath… And Xiu Xiu’s “Hives Hives.”
I died.
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